Honda wants to save America's drive-in movie theaters

They're part of our car culture, and they're worth rescuing.

America's drive-in movie theaters are on the brink of extinction. At their peak in the 1950s and '60s, the country boasted over 4000 of the open-air cinemas. Today, there are 368, and these holdovers from the analog era are in trouble. The problem, as illustrated in this excellent L.A. Times piece, is that most of them still use traditional film projectors. Hollywood, where fortunes were built on celluloid, is getting ready to stop distributing film prints altogether after this year. Digital projection is now the norm.

Unfortunately for drive-in owners, digital projection is also an expensive upgrade, costing anywhere from $60,000 to $85,000. What that means is that after this season, many drive-ins simply won't reopen, and another chunk of America's car culture will be lost for good.

That's where Honda comes in. The automaker just kicked off Project Drive-In, whose goal is to help save drive-ins from digitally-imposed doom. To that end, Honda is donating five digital projectors to the cause, and the public determines who gets them via an online polling campaign. In addition, it makes it easy for you to donate funds to directly benefit the preservation of drive-in theaters.

Listen, I'm not naïve. I know you can't stop progress, and that no matter what, a good number of drive-in theaters will be out of business next year. But this is a good cause and a worthy effort by Honda. So go vote, go visit your local drive-in, and experience a piece of our car culture that's worth preserving.

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